Despite working in the industry for about twenty years now, I don’t think Charlie Day knows how Hollywood works. At least that’s the impression I get from Fool’s Paradise, his wildly misguided directing debut that is ostensibly a satire of Hollywood, but operating off of only the broadest of strokes and weakest impressions of the showbiz machine -certainly as it exists in the modern age. And it’s bizarre that Day chooses a contemporary setting given how brazenly dedicated he is to evoking a classic Hollywood sensibility and the classic Hollywood style -down to illustrating certain aspects of the industry in a way that is highly out of touch with its methods currently. A movie composed on general pop-culture saturated ideas of movie-making, celebrity, and the Hollywood system, but completely detached from any realities of that system. Thus, a satire with utterly no substance.
I feel like Day went into this with his character and the general vibe of the movie in mind before anything else. Referred to through much of the film as “Latte Pronto”, he is a mute man discharged from a mental facility, who by happenstance winds up becoming a major Hollywood figure. Clearly Day’s aiming for something of an ode to silent era slapstick comedians like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin -Latte’s aesthetic is very consciously reminiscent of the Tramp; but more-so it’s the influence of Hal Ashby’s Being There that is all over this movie and character. It’s the very same basic premise of the unassuming simple-minded guy wandering into a bigger institutional world and by happenstance stumbling into immense fame and success -it’s just substituting politics for the movie business. In several moments it is naked homage, with characters in this film who are easy analogues for ones in that.
But Charlie Day is not Peter Sellers, nor is Hal Ashby, and he’s especially not Chaplin. He’s too aware of himself and the ridiculousness of the situation to come off earnestly in that way of Sellers just idly moving through circumstances; and though It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has shown he’s a gifted comedian, where it comes to precise slapstick in the vein of the old masters he can’t convincingly pull off the physicality -this is especially apparent in the lame running gag of him accidentally knocking over coffee tables when crossing his legs. His expressiveness and response to the physical jokes are rather banal too -in the hands of someone like Rowan Atkinson, this comedy could work much better. And these are just his limitations as actor in the performance of a very specific kind of comedy character. As director, he leaves a lot to be desired too -sadly, because he’s clearly very enthusiastic behind the camera and has so many idols he’s aiming to emulate. One of them appears to be Wes Anderson, as evidenced by several symmetrical frames, centred compositions, and sharp pans, such as whenever in the office of his agent played by Edie Falco. Another might be Sidney Lumet, whose aesthetic for the movie Network Day borrows for a sequence with John Malkovich that again seems a direct homage. You could find bits of obviously Jacques Tati in there, Terry Gilliam, and even Quentin Tarantino. But they are rarely consistent and don’t much compliment each other, lost to Day’s more generic artistry and bewildering script.
Fool’s Paradise is a movie sharply out-of-date, a side-effect of Day’s evocations of classic Hollywood. For one thing it seems to exist in a world where westerns are still a studio-supported genre and shot on sound-stages with sets and matte backdrops rather than on location. That was the first tip-off to this movie’s bizarre unreality, a temporally inconsistent Hollywood that may be conscious but not cohesive. You look at movies like Sorry to Bother You or Annette, which openly exist in heightened realities, and the lack of certainty or confidence on Day’s part here is plainly apparent. And this failure to commit extends to the entirety of the film’s satire, which is dull and really toothless. From the quick and shallow celebrity marriage to an attempt of sorts to parody superhero movie culture -which can’t really amass a joke more than ‘aren’t superheroes based on bugs funny’ and a couple lame observations about green-screen acting. The dominance of superhero media is a pop culture phenomenon rife for satire -and it’s long overdue its Blazing Saddles. This movie sets up several scenarios for sharp commentary on the subject (it’s only real notice of the modern media landscape) and then never says anything relevant -all as a kind of frantic pace that at times seems to be resembling screwball comedy of all things gives everything an obnoxious air of pseudo-wit. And I guess we’re still making celebrity third world adoption and failed-star-to-pornography-pipeline jokes in 2023.
Essentially the co-lead to Day through all of this is Ken Jeong’s Lenny the Publicist, who signs Latte (and unwittingly gives him that name) at the inciting incident wherein Latte is picked off the street to stand-in for a crass method actor (also played by Day) who refuses to leave his trailer and dies shortly after. Lenny makes it his personal mission to make Latte a star. This character is positioned as both another comedic industry stereotype that Jeong plays with his usual overwrought exuberance, and, though in a sardonic tone, a real friend to Latte who must undergo a small personal journey in his treatment of him. Coming from the world of TV comedy, it’s no surprise Day plays these beats with that brand of tongue-in-cheek insincerity, but it feels like it has no real point, emerging in the last act as lip service to the idea of emotional growth and to give the movie a cheap and entirely insensible resolution. Even in the best of satires there is a sense that something matters, at the very least that the point behind it all is expressed with a fervent passion -but that never once resonates in Fool’s Paradise. Indeed, Day might care more about showcasing the impressive cast he’s assembled: Kate Beckinsale as Latte’s vapid actress wife, Adrien Brody as the intense, alcoholic co-star, Jason Sudeikis (resembling Dave Grohl) as the doofus superhero movie director, with Jason Bateman in a cameo as his VFX technician (I guess for the three or four Horrible Bosses fans out there), Jillian Bell as a scam New Age therapist, Dean Norris as a hotheaded executive, Common as a failed star turned homeless person, and the late Ray Liotta as the irate director who launches Latte’s career to begin with. There are also of course a series of small appearances by Day’s It’s Always Sunny co-stars Glenn Howerton, David Hornsby, Jimmi Simpson, Artemis Pebdani, and Mary Elizabeth Ellis. But nobody is able to rise above the material here and all are just shockingly mediocre in their one-note caricatures.
Honestly, this is a movie that feels less like it was directed by Charlie Day as much as by Charlie Kelly -it’s got something of the overconfident idiocy streak of “The Nightman Cometh” but real and a hell of a lot less fun. The one other movie recently on the mind that it is notably comparable to is Babylon, another story about a celebrity’s rise against the vain indulgences of Hollywood. But Babylon, despite being set in the 1920s, spoke to something real and relevant with authentic complexity in a way that Fool’s Paradise, more modern, cannot come close to grasping. It’s an observational movie, pointing out the well-known ways, hyperbolic or otherwise, that Hollywood eats a person up, but without offering anything to say about it amidst Day’s preoccupation with playing the silent comedian. It is sad how much misplaced dedication can be felt, and maybe Day in the future can harness that in a firmer direction. But Fool’s Paradise is a foolish film better left forgotten.
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